My mother lives in Vero Beach and of course I haven't heard from her since Friday afternoon. I watched in awe as Frances ponderously moved toward the area from West Palm Beach to Melbourne, and Vero sits right between them. I guess "official" landfall was at Fort Pierce, which is about 15 miles south of Vero, and considering the size of Frances, I would imagine that amounts to much the same thing. Now Mom's in a good, solid, well-built condo and they have inner rooms to shelter in (they weren't in the mandatory evacuation area, and by Friday afternoon it was too late to take off), and she assured me they were well-stocked with water and food and cash, but since the power's been out in that area for a while and the humidity has to be incredible, well, yuck. Her roommate is a much older and more fragile woman, and I'm actually more worried about her than my super-tough mom. It's probably going to be a while before I hear anything, since the rear of Frances is over that area even now, with more high winds and rain coming, so I'll just mildly fret for a while.

Someone on my friends list (who shall remain nameless) posted an enormous picture of Frances which has kicked my entire friends list so wide I have to scroll back and forth to read it.

Phoenix weather is, by contrast, really rather pleasant. It's 85 degrees, but the humidity is 37% with a dewpoint of 56; yesterday it didn't even break 100 and it was really nice being out and about. Went to spend money at CostCo and a few other places, and spent a goodly part of the last two days cooking and baking. I made chocolate-coconut macaroons, so had some egg yolks left, so once again made creme brulee since I now have ramikins and a torch.

I need to practice with the torch. My suger did not crystalize properly -- it was melting one sugar crystal at a time, which gave it not a crust, but a layer of un-melted sugar with little bubbles of melt swimming over the top, and if I held the flame over any of them for too long, they would eventually start to crystalize together, but this made for slightly burned, hard-as-glass lumps rather than an even crust. Hmmm. Must experiment further.

Also made a pizza creation with pesto, langoustinos, feta crumbles and provolone cheese, which came out tasty.